The Blood Star

by Nicholas Guild

  She belongs now, I thought. She is among her own people and she has a place in this house which no one challenges, so of course she is happy.

  Such blind fools are perhaps all men.

  Outside, the evening was warm and three sheep were roasting on spits over the trench fire. Everyone had been to the wine jar, even the women, so everyone was merry. An Achaian named Teucer entertained us with a comic version of the story of Heracles and Eurytus, performing all the parts himself in different voices, and there was much laughter.

  It seems a peculiarity of the Greek temperament that at a certain point in any evening’s entertainment, usually after everyone’s belly holds at least three cups of wine, conversation begins to take on a certain quality of abstraction. Phrases like “to return to first principles” or “to consider the nature of the thing” or “looking at the matter in its essential character” begin to turn up, and very quickly one finds oneself in the midst of a philosophical dispute.

  Philosophy—it is a lovely word, native to the Greek tongue and descriptive of a concept for which, so far as I am aware, no other has an equivalent.

  On that particular evening the discussion began with various critiques of Teucer’s performance and from that proceeded to an analysis of the myth and an argument over whether or not the king had been right to deny Heracles the wife he had won through his prowess in archery, which in turn led, by a chain of reasoning I could not hope to reproduce, to a general discussion of kingship and whether it or oligarchy or even democracy was the most natural and desirable means by which a state might be governed. One or two of the poorer farmers favored democracy; the majority, however, held for the rule of an aristocracy, although even this was not without its detractors:

  “To choose oligarchy over democracy is to make a great distinction out of a small one,” maintained Teucer, who I think continued to nurse a sense of injury over a few of the things which had been said concerning his performance. “Since all men are selfish, both systems divide men according to their interests and thus create dissension, which is in all societies the enemy of good order. Democracy only achieves this end a trifle faster.”

  “But by the same line of reasoning a king, who is after all a man and thus will promote his own happiness over that of others, grows divided from his subjects.”

  This made Teucer smile and nod and lay a finger to the side of his nose.

  “Ah yes,” he said, “but a king has the power to enforce his will and thus maintains order, and it is order rather than happiness which is the aim of government.”

  “Someone should inquire of the Sicels whether they prefer the order which Ducerius has brought to their lives over such happiness as they might find without him.”

  I do not remember who said this, but it had the effect of demolishing Teucer’s argument with one sentence and imposing on all of us a profound silence.

  “No. No one can prefer kingship under such a man as Ducerius,” said my friend Epeios, morose as ever. It was a sentiment with which all concurred, even Teucer.

  “Yes, and soon it will be not merely the Sicels who feel the weight of his hand, for he means to drive us out if he can.”

  “Soon!—hah!” A Boeotian named Cretheos, who owned a farm near the mountains, laughed scornfully. “Already the brigands have raided a neighbor of mine, burning his barn and killing one of his young sons. Ducerius has an army of four hundred soldiers, so why then does he not drive these thieves and murderers from his territories? Because, as everyone knows, they pay him a regular tribute from their spoils. They are an instrument of his power and would not now be attacking Greeks if he had not given his approval.”

  This too every man present understood to be the truth.

  Yet it was not an evening for gloomy reflections, and if the world was a mad place we were still all fine fellows and Greeks in the bargain. There is a saying that the gods will not permit a man to be unhappy when danger is far away and the wine cup is at his elbow. This too is the truth, and thus it was not very long before we had jested our way into a better temper.

  When the sheep were well roasted and the meat was almost falling of its own weight from the bone, the women took their knives and cut away great pieces, draping them over plates of boiled millet so that soon every man’s beard was shining with fat. Men and women together, we gorged ourselves sober again, packing our bellies so tight that all drunkenness was squeezed out of us—we did not dispute then, not only because the Greeks consider it unseemly to speak of public matters before their wives but because at such a time a man can only lie on the cool ground gasping for breath.

  But at last we returned again to our wine jars, and the women entertained us with chanting and dancing such as one sees among no other people. Then Ganymedes danced again, this time with greater propriety, and then the women departed to perform certain rituals over the threshold of my new house which are their sole province and which it is forbidden for any man to witness.

  Then Kephalos came and sat down beside me, carrying with him a wine jar from which he refilled my cup.

  “I did not notice Selana among the dancers,” I said, wondering why, when only the instant before I had been intending to say something else.

  “Did you not, My Lord? Then perhaps she was occupied elsewhere.” Kephalos smiled cryptically, as he was likely to when he found himself in possession of some secret. “Perhaps her thoughts are not on dancing but on her new duties as mistress of My Lord’s house.”

  He paused for a moment, appearing to savor the discomfort this idea caused me, as if I had at last stepped into a trap against which he had been warning me for years.

  “There are many unmarried men here tonight,” he went on at last. “Doubtless most of them would be receptive to a reasonable offer, for Greek women are still scarce on this island. Have you noticed any, My Lord, whom Selana seems particularly to favor?”

  “No. . . no, I have not.”

  “Neither have I, so perhaps it shall prove necessary to provide for her in some other way.”

  “I think, however, that Selana’s future can safely wait a little longer.”

  “So you are continually saying, My Lord.” He leaned toward me to refill my wine cup, which had somehow become empty again. “Yet she is like a flower whose petals open wider under each day’s sun. She blooms, and the fragrance is sweet in every man’s nostrils.”

  “Then let her choose the man she wants and he shall have her,” I snapped, wishing Kephalos would be silent.

  Just then Ganymedes approached, staggering under the burden of the wine fumes that clouded his brain. He lay down beside Kephalos, who caressed the boy’s tangled, shining hair with the tips of his fingers, and within a few minutes he was asleep at his master’s feet, snoring like an ox.

  “You had best bring him under control,” I said, happy to be taking my revenge. “He grows more dissolute and lazy every day.”

  “He is dissolute and lazy by nature,” Kephalos responded, calmly enough. “He knows neither honesty nor modesty nor loyalty. He is full of cunning shifts and will doubtless come to a bad end one day. Yet what am I to do? He is as he is, and I cannot change him. I can only love him, for I too am what I am. A man does well to take the world as he finds it, for he cannot make it or himself any better by pretending to turn aside from his own wants. Our selfish passions are wiser than we know.”

  We sat together for a long time, and Kephalos kept refilling my cup until, I must own, I was somewhat flush with wine.

  Then at last, and in accord with custom, my neighbors came with torches to light my way to my new house. There was much laughter intermixed with the chanting of hymns, for, even though my part in it was over, the celebration would continue until dawn.

  It was a fine moment when at last I crossed over the threshold of my house of stone. Everyone cheered loudly. I was given an oil lamp to light my way to bed, and Kephalos stepped forward to close the door behind me.

  The fire which only death could quench burned
on the hearth. In the morning Selana would rise to replenish it, and the continuity of life within these walls would be affirmed. For generation upon generation, the children of my loins would live here—thus the shade of Merope had promised. The children of my loins. . .

  I needed to ease my mind in sleep. I walked through the kitchen to find the bedchamber I had chosen for myself.

  When I opened the door I heard something stir. I raised the lamp to see—it was Selana, lying under a blanket on my sleeping mat. She sat up and the blanket slid down to reveal her breasts.

  For a moment neither of us either spoke or moved. The expression on her face was fierce, as if I were an intruder to be warned off, but I think it was only that the light had startled her awake.

  “Go to your own bed, Selana,” I said at last. “What game is this?”

  “It is not a game, and I am in my own bed.”

  “Who has decided that?”

  “I have, since you would not.”

  Suddenly I felt very tired. I knelt down beside the sleeping mat—I could not fight her any longer. She put her arms around me and kissed my lips, and I knew I was lost.

  “Build your house of stone and your house of flesh,” my mother had said. Selana’s flesh seemed to glow in the soft light of the lamp. Her mouth was warm against mine, and I could taste the desire that heated her blood.

  “Come into me,” she whispered. “I belong to no one but you—I have been yours since the first day, and only because I would have no other. Come into me. Find your rest and the easement of your body. I have lived only for this moment.”

  The weight of her arms pulled me down. I lay beside her, feeling the whole length of her body against mine. My hands sought her breasts, and I could almost feel her heart beating beneath my fingers.

  Her legs opened to receive me, and there was only a short, choking sob of pain as I thrust into her and then a moan of passion that seemed to come from deep within and filled me with the most terrible desire, as if it would burn us both to ashes.

  XXIV

  That night, amidst the noise of my neighbors’ revelry, I went into Selana many times, and at last, bathed in sweat, we fell asleep in each other’s arms. When I awoke the next morning she had gathered up her sandals and left—the smell of cooking already filled the house.

  The hearth fire burned brightly while Selana heated up a pot of barley with pieces of mutton in it. No one else seemed to be awake yet. I stepped out through the door and saw that last night’s guests had all crept away with the dawn. There was no mist, and on the eastern horizon the sea looked like polished stone. It would be a fine, warm day. A bird perched just at the edge of the roof looked down at me with wary curiosity.

  “Come inside and eat,” she called softly.

  She was beautiful to behold that morning. Her face appeared to glow with new blood, but she seemed unwilling to meet my eyes. When she brought the food I caught her wrist and pulled her to me for a kiss. She fell into my embrace with a passion that was almost desperate. She was trembling, as if it were not so much my arms that held her as her own fierce longing for them.

  It was perhaps only then that I realized how much she loved me—how much she had always loved me. She had never told me so, never actually spoken the words, but for how little did words count against that one moment.

  Then, all at once, she freed herself and stepped away from me.

  “Eat,” she said. “The others will not sleep forever, and I have my work to do.”

  Since the day I had gone to the house of war to learn how to be a soldier, the women who served at my table had always been slaves. Some of them had found their way into my bed, but none had ever loved me. I had never known a wife.

  Selana called herself my slave, but she was not. She slept beside me because it was her will and she kept my house because it was her will. If she had left to follow some other man, I would not have put out my arm to stop her. Nothing compelled her to submission.

  That morning, when I took the breakfast bowl from her hand, I knew for the first time what the simplest goatherd knows who has covered with a veil some woman who loves him. I cannot describe it more than that.

  We were clearing another hundred-paces-square patch of ground for our autumn wheat crop, and a few hours of pulling stones out of the earth had a clarifying effect on my state of mind. Sore muscles make a man impatient with a fastidious conscience, even if it is his own—at first, when I sat down for a moment to rest and take a drink of water, the only emotion of which I was capable was a certain irritation over the fact that, for some reason, no one was there to help me. So I was a little relieved when, at the hour before noon, Kephalos appeared at the edge of the new field. He smiled, perhaps a trifle foolishly, and held up a leather pouch for me to see.

  “In your inexplicable haste, Lord, you departed this morning without your midday meal. Selana sent me along with it, lest you starve.”

  He appeared to regard this as something of a jest as he sat down in the shade of an elm tree and began untying the pouch’s cord to share out its contents between us. There was no wine, so he had to be satisfied with the contents of my waterskin, at which he wrinkled his nose in disgust.

  “I think,” he continued, wiping his mouth, “that it cannot be too soon before we begin to plant some vines—I have a spot picked out that offers just the right mixture of sun and shade. . .”

  When he looked into my face the sentence died on his lips and he threw up both hands in a mute gesture of resignation, as if he despaired of ever tasting wine again.

  “You must not blame yourself, Lord, since before women we are all but guileless children. Besides, we shall all grow accustomed to it—one can grow accustomed to anything. Selana, by the way, is in a very agreeable frame of mind this morning. She does not even scold Ganymedes.”

  “Then you think I have acted unwisely.”

  “You?” Kephalos found it impossible to restrain a short fit of laughter. “My Lord, you hardly acted at all. In these matters it is not the man but the woman who acts, even if she is only fifteen years old—perhaps particularly if she is only fifteen years old. Selana simply decided that she had waited long enough. In recent months she had expressed this view to me many times. She was very firm in her resolve and I, like you, was at last unable to withhold my consent.”

  He shrugged his shoulders, denying responsibility, like a servant who has been robbed of his master’s cloak.

  “You had best be reconciled, Lord, for the thing is done.”

  We sat beneath the elm tree sharing out cheese and a flat piece of bread from which we tore strips. I ate slowly, as a man will when his own thoughts do not much please him, and Kephalos watched me with worried eyes.

  “Where is Enkidu?” I asked finally.

  “Enkidu?” For a moment he seemed not to know to whom I referred. “He is with Selana—she has set him to digging her a pantry behind the house that the meat will keep better. Ganymedes sits nearby and supervises, encumbering everyone with his valuable suggestions. Why do you ask?”

  And then, of course, he realized why.

  “You may dismiss that idea from your mind,” he said, with a contemptuous gesture. “He is a brute, but he is wiser than you are, Lord. Whatever is agreeable to Selana is agreeable to him.”

  “I wonder if it will always be so agreeable to her—in my life I have caused much misery to the women who loved me. And she does love me, Kephalos. That, as much as anything, is what oppresses me.”

  “I know. But perhaps at last your god, who is as possessive as any woman, has decided to let you go. In any case, to love is to take risks, as Selana is old enough to appreciate—it is only the dead who are safe.

  “Think no more of it, my foolish Master, since, as I have come to understand, you have as much need of her as she of you. The thing is done and cannot be undone. I do not believe that now you would wish it undone.”

  The worthy physician Kephalos spoke, as always, with much wisdom. The gods, who are mo
re generous than men deserve, had offered me not a second but a third chance at contentment and a quiet spirit, and I would have been an even greater fool than my friend imagined me if I had refused it.

  An hour later Enkidu joined me in the new field and we spent the rest of the daylight clearing stones. As soon as I saw him I realized how foolish I had been to suspect him of reproaching me—this was not a matter in which he chose to involve himself, it seemed. When the sun set behind the mountains we returned home for dinner.

  In the course of the evening Ganymedes entertained himself with a number of coarse jests at Selana’s expense, which she found it possible to ignore but which finally moved me to drag the little brute outside and to thrash him soundly, with a warning that any repetition would earn him more than just a raw backside. He limped back into the house feeling himself very ill-used indeed, but after that he contrived to hold his tongue.

  I found my bed that night with a still unquiet heart, but Selana opened her arms to me and in her body I could find comfort and peace. She had what she wanted and so did I, so I was not inclined to argue with this new order of things. Perhaps Kephalos was right, I thought, and the god is at last disposed to leave me in peace. Perhaps I can die here after a tranquil life, and this woman who loves me—and she was a woman now—will draw off my last breath with her kiss.

  It seemed little enough to hope for.

  . . . . .

  The next four months brought us the autumn rains and then the long drought of winter and then our first reaping of wheat. We had cleared perhaps half our arable land, but much of it still lay fallow simply because we had no opportunity to bring it under the plow and so it would have to wait until the next planting season.

  With the stones we built first a barn in which to store our harvest and stable the horses, and then a permanent enclosure for the sheep. After that we simply piled the stones along the edges of the fields, where they formed long, useless ramparts.

  “Someday,” I said to Kephalos, only half in jest, “I shall have to build myself another great palace, like the one you raised for me at Amat—the gods know we have all the stone we need.”